Mothers, mothering, and COVID-19: dispatches from a pandemic

Abstract

"The central directive of the current COVID-19 pandemic has been conveyed in two words "Stay Home". Yet, to date, no research has examined how households are functioning and managing under social isolation. With little or no support, and under close to impossible conditions, many mothers engage in paid labour from the home while being concurrently responsible for their children's care and education as daycare and schools remain closed. With no respite from 24/7 days, single mothers, in particular, live in an insufferable isolated microenvironment with no one allowed into their homes and most outdoor activity for children cancelled. The collection considers how mothers are managing the new requirements of motherwork under the destabilizing restraints of this pandemic. In its explorations, the collection addresses why the essential and frontline work of mothering in this pandemic has been discounted, disregarded and dismissed by governments, media, and the larger society. By way of creative art, poetry, photography and creative writing along with scholarly research, the collection seeks to make visible what has been invisibilized and render audible what has been silenced: the care and crisis of motherwork through and after the COVID-19 pandemic."--